Multiculturalism comes to Queensland

Maximilian Brandle speaks about migration in the 1960s and the volunteers who welcomed new arrivals.

Created:

2005

Date Added:

15 February 2006

Source:

Maximilian Brandle interviewed by Andrew Jakubowicz for MMA

Format:

mov (Quicktime);

File size:

4.1 MB

Length:

2 min 24 s

Transcript

Migration
patterns were very different in the 60s…

So, a large
number of people came here representing a small number of European countries.
So we had relatively few ethnic communities here…

Brisbane was a
large country town. You could shoot a cannonball from one end of Queen Street
to the other on a Sunday without hitting anybody. It was a pleasant, rustic
environment but it was far from cosmopolitan. But it was interesting that the
communities, like the Italians and the Greeks, had very close rapport with each
other. And I used to go to some of their functions and enjoyed myself, and I
met some people who were involved with the good Neighbour Council and so from
the middle of the 60s I was involved there as a volunteer…

When the Good
Neighbour Council was abolished nationally, the Queensland Government agreed to
continue the Good Neighbour Council on a state basis. And by 1983 that was also
changed over to the Queensland Migrant Welcome Association, which was
operational for eight years, and I was its president. It was fully serviced by
the State of Queensland, with 250 volunteers from the ex-Good Neighbour Council
network. Because Queensland is the most decentralised state, and we were able
to offer services on a free volunteer basis from the very top of Queensland,
from Cape York right down to the border of New South Wales and to Roma, at very
little cost to the government…

From the Good
Neighbour Council point of view, Joh supported the Good Neighbour Council as
long as the members don't vote against him. He made that quite clear to us. He
said – look, as long as you don't cause troubles, as long as you don't
strike, or have demonstrations against me, I'll give you some funds to have
full-time staff members supporting you, but you've got to behave….

The network was
no longer needed because professionals then took over migrant services, whereas
before, almost all the volunteer work was undertaken by idealists…

We have now
about 180 nationalities represented in the greater Brisbane area.